One Moment Longer
by Davies
Summary: A relationship ends ... or does it? Part Three of the Raye Trilogy.


One Moment Longer

"In all probability, the Queen will die within an hour, your Excellency," says the young doctor standing before me. "We have been unable to stop her decline ... it is the opinion of some of the more esoterically inclined among the Royal Medical Staff that her Majesty is using her powers to _speed_ the disintegration of her health."

He is young, for a doctor. I do not believe that he is more than twenty-one years old. Younger than Amy had been, when she earned her first doctorate. Perhaps that is why he has been given the no-doubt odious task of reporting to the Queen's sole active bodyguard the news that she will soon be out of a job.

They are all young, it seems ... all the people in this radiant paradise on Earth that Serena ... that Serenity has created. I was told, only five years ago, by a flatterer, that even I was young, certainly no more than twenty-one. I told the flatterer exactly what he could do with his compliments, and left him standing on the dance floor, keenly aware that he had been utterly humiliated, and that everyone in Crystal Tokyo would know about it within the hour. How the grande dame had said, "I have had my choice of companions over the centuries, and I wouldn't pick you as one of them if you were the last human being on Earth. Go away, little boy."

I am a remarkably preserved one thousand, two hundred fifty-eight year old woman. I am one of the oldest beings alive on this planet. And there is not a damn thing I can do to stop or slow the death of my Queen and best friend.

That's not fair to Lita, of course. Lita is always there for me. Lita would be here, with me, now, if it weren't for that STUPID slip and fall accident she had that's left her in bed for a month. Even for one who is blessed with the magic of the Silver Empyrian Crystal, bones can get fragile at our age.

We argued, last time we spoke. That was ... two days ago, when I'd told her that she should admit herself to the Royal Hospital, rather than just letting the leg heal by itself.

She gave me a look. "Yeah, right. Those chrome-domes have been just waiting for something like this to happen, so they can do a complete medical and figure out exactly why my bod's too stupid to age."

"Don't be so paranoid, Lita. At worst, they'll do a scan so they can replace the bone."

"Nuh-UH. I'm going to my grave with all my original parts, thank you very much. I refuse to be like Mina, where they're not sure just what was metal and what was flesh."

* * *

I suppose, in retrospect, it was inevitable that Mina would be the one of us to lose her mind. Lita, Amy, and I all had our clearly defined roles in the world Serenity had created; I was the Commandant of the Armed Forces of the Crystal Kingdom; Amy was the Royal Physician and Scientist Laureate; and Lita was Major Domo and Chief Bodyguard to her Majesty. All that was left for Mina was to be Morale Officer and Aide de Camp. And she wasn't needed for the one (Serenity's morale needing improving? With Endymion around?!) or suited to the other.

So she snapped. It was a healthy seeming sort of madness, though, and it was decades before we realized how far she was gone. The ultimate autograph hound, having obtained the signatures of everyone of significance for the last two or three hundred years, decided to become the woman whose autograph everyone wanted.

Mina embraced the superheroic image we'd been given by the media of the late twentieth century. She'd disappear from Crystal Tokyo for weeks, months, even years at an end. Stories would come back to us from all over the planet, across the solar system, and from the near stars, about her heroic deeds: single-handedly dealing with rampaging monsters or alien invasions, helping police forces to deal with crime waves, and generally being an all-around do-gooder. Sometimes there were disturbing reports that she'd been injured, often seriously, sometimes near-fatally in the performance of her heroism. But she always came back to the palace in one piece, cheerful and chipper, with a glib explanation for how she'd escaped injury or worse.

I should have suspected something. There were enough hints. Amy, being Amy, figured it out first, but Amy, being a professional doctor, never revealed her patient's medical information without permission. But I could have deduced from Amy's increasing fascination - almost obsession with cutting-edge cybertechnology, that someone she cared about was using the stuff. And nobody in the Palace had it.

But I never knew, until one day, when the story that was being told spoke of her apparent death in a fight over, ironically enough, Venus. We were all gathered together in the throne room, quietly talking about her, when she poked her head in the door.

"Hey! Why all the long faces? Did you all get dumped simultaneously? Hmm ... nope, can't be that, Serenity and Endymion are both still here."

And I ran to grab her in a hug, shake her a few times, scream at her for making us worry, and generally treat her as I had Serena in the old days. I got as far as grabbing, but I was stopped short by the clanging noise created when my hand slapped into her shoulder blade. Everything seemed to stop for a moment while I looked at her closely.

Her skin was perfect ... too perfect, in several areas, for it to be for real. One of her eyes seemed to shine a little brighter than the other. And I couldn't help but feel, somehow, her increased mass from all the metal she used to reinforce her skeleton.

As from a great distance, I heard myself whisper "Oh my gods, Mina, what've you done to yourself?"

She looked more proud than embarrassed as she replied, "Made some improvements. Wanna see my warranty?"

She came to the palace less often after that. I think we couldn't hide our revulsion enough. Amy had it the worst ... every few years, Mina would contact her on some pretense, casually mention some new modifications that had just come on the market, and say something about not trusting any of the cyber-docs out there ... Eventually, Amy finally came up with a self-repairing, self-upgrading set of bionics, installed them in her - getting rid of most of what was left of Mina's internal organs, I gather - and asked her never to darken her doorstep again.

Mina shrugged, and said "It's been nice knowing you." And left.

Amy came to me that night, crying and vomiting ... I don't think I've ever seen anyone so completely devastated. She had, for decades, been helping Mina engage in a course of utter self-destruction, blinding herself to what she did, saying that it was for a friend.

I hated Mina at that moment. I hated her for years afterwards.

It was twenty years later that it finally happened. The Black Moon Crisis had come and gone, and we'd won, with the aid of our younger selves. I'd been so tempted to warn my younger self, or Amy, or even Mina, about what was going to happen. But I didn't, less because of Sailor Pluto's warning than because I honestly couldn't see any way for us to avoid it.

Mina said her good-byes quickly, and headed offworld in her small shuttlecraft, "Freighter V". Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, the on-board computer of the antimatter transporter "Xavier" malfunctioned, killing the crew, and beginning a slow descent into Earth's atmosphere. If it impacted on any settled area, the loss of life would be enormous, even if the multiple redundant magnetic seals on the antimatter containment fields retained integrity. If they failed, it would have been a greater disaster than all the nuclear weapons detonated in the Final War combined.

In the darkest hour, Mina finally demonstrated that she really was the hero she'd set out to make herself into. Her shuttle intersected with the transporter, and she set out to bring the ship to a safe landing. She brought it down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Enormous waves caused by the impact of the ship battered against Crystal Tokyo's sea walls for the rest of the day, but the antimatter didn't explode.

It's doubtful that any non-augmented human being, even with magical powers like ours, could have survived the accelleration long enough to make sure that the ship landed without any risk of human life. We're not sure how long she stayed conscious ...

They brought up the anti-matter, and Mina's body, but left the ship at the bottom of the Pacific, and we placed the ashes of her organic parts in the Royal Cemetery.

* * *

"That's disgusting!" I shouted. "How dare you talk about her like that? She gave up her life for us!"

"Are you saying I wouldn't have done the same?" she shouted back.

It went down hill from there, and we haven't spoken since. Not even last night, when Endymion ... passed on. Not now, as Serena lies dying. Serenity. Serena has been dead for well over a thousand years.

"Ma'am?"

I suppose I should be embarrassed that I haven't been listening to this young doctor, but I'm not. He has, unless I've missed my guess, been running off a list of symptoms that my Queen is suffering from as she dies.

"I'll see her now," I say quietly.

"I don't think that's wise, at least not until you undergo decontamination procedures ..."

I give him a gaze that once froze men twice his age in their tracks. "I will see her now. If I am carrying any viruses, she is almost certainly immune to them. And if you imagine that I will delay in going to my Queen's side, you are sadly mistaken."

And I walk, unescorted into her room.

She seems so small in the bed ... she was always, even after we underwent our ... second growth, the shortest of all five of us. Her skin is so pale that she almost seems like a ghost, rather than the living, laughing being that she was even two days ago.

"Your Majesty?" I whisper, leaning in close to her.

"Momma?" she asks, in a dazed voice.

Oh no. Not this cruelty. Surely, if she had a choice in which symptoms would afflict her, she wouldn't have chosen senility that would confuse her into thinking I'm a woman who's been dust for over twelve hundred years.

"No, Serenity, it's me, Raye. Sailor Mars."

She pouts. "Hadda dream about Raye. She got realllly old and ugly! Coulden keep a ... boyfriend if her life depended on it!"

No tears. I refuse to cry. "Yeah ... I guess I couldn't, either."

"Well, at least you are honest about it."

She's smiling that mischievous grin I've known and loved for more years than I care to recall, and right now I'm not sure if I want to rip it off her face or burst into laughter.

"You ... you ..."

"Had you going there, did I not?"

The laughter wins ... I wonder when exactly that started to happen? When did I stop being annoyed by her laughter into the face of destruction, and start loving her for it?

Maybe I always did.

"Oh, I am sorry, Raye," she sighs. "I am so, so sorry to do this to you."

"The joke? Oh, Serena, I've ..."

"No," she interrupts, shaking her head, "the dying."

The laughter in my heart fades away. "Then you really are ..."

"Yes. I had been thinking about it for a while, now. Endymion's accident ... it was just the last straw, I guess. We have both been so weary, for so long ... really, ever since Reenie's wedding. We played out the role Fate laid for us, and it was time to rest."

"But rest doesn't mean death ... you could just ... retire, or abdicate in favor of Reenie, or whatever."

"Where could we go?" she asks, sighing. "We were galactically famous, Raye. Anywhere we went, unless it was on a cruise ship heading towards Andromeda, people would know us. And Reenie deserves better than that ... she should not have to begin her reign with me still around to critique her policy. We are similar, but we're not the same ... who could have predicted she would marry that boy from what was left of the people of Nemesis?"

"Has it occured to you that this will hurt her? Suicide isn't painless, Serena - Serenity! It hurts those around you one hell of a lot more than ..."

"She knows, Raye."

A long pause.

"I asked for her permission before I started. She cried a little, but she said that she did not want Endymion to face ... whoever or whatever is on the other side ... alone."

"What about the rest of us?! When were you thinking about asking the rest of us, huh?!" Even when I told myself that I hated her, I have never, in all my life, been so angry with her.

"Raye ..."

"No! I do NOT give you permission to kill yourself! Any more than I would give permission for any of our Generals to do so! If I have to, I will drag Amy and Lita in here, and we will FORCE you to stay alive."

For one brief moment, I am witness to something that very few other beings have ever witnessed.

Serenity angry.

Not "Serenity in a fit of Serena-like pique"; not "Serenity pretending to be angry because she knows that's how she and I show how we care." But actual anger, and yes, I think a bit of hatred, on her face, and in her eyes.

It doesn't last. But the hurt expression that comes afterwards is worse.

I remember, once, just once, she gave me that look. It was right after we regained our memories, and I made some stupid comment about having to hang around with her again. It only lasted for a second, but I felt lower than the dirt on my shoes.

"Lita and Amy have already said they will not try to stop me," she whispers.

And once more my world is upside down. "You asked them ... before you spoke to ME?!"

"I knew that you would be the hardest one to convince ..."

"You're not going to convince me, Serena - Sereni - no, you're acting like a child, so I'll damn well call you the name you had when you WERE a child! You will NEVER convince me to let you die, I will NOT let you go!"

She closes her eyes, and lets out a long breath.

The heart monitor flatlines. "GET IN HERE, NOW!" I scream at top of my lungs.

And before anyone can say or do anything, the heart monitor goes back to normal. She opens her eyes, and stares at me, a challenge plainly written in her gaze. "I believe that I have demonstrated that when I decide to go, there is not a damn thing you are going to be able to do about it?"

There's nothing of Serena in that voice, that gaze. Usually, I can see traces of her, not too far beneath the surface. This is all Serenity, Goddess-Queen of Earth. My friend died so that she could be born, twelve hundred years ago.

* * *

Planes screamed above the ruins of Tokyo, bound for the battlefield of China, perhaps, not knowing that a far greater battle was being fought below. This battle would never be recorded in the histories of that Final War. But it was the most important in human history.

I pressed close to the forcefield, as if by will alone I could pass through it. On the other side, Serena was standing alone (or almost alone, she had Luna with her) against the mysterious, one-eyed man named Ourannos, who claimed to be her father. He'd created a force field so that he and his "daughter" could have a private talk ... which had degenerated into a fight.

Serena had used every single trick she'd gotten from over a decade of being Sailor Moon, but it wasn't enough. Even now, Ourannos was beginning to push back against the force of her Tiara that pinned his huge spear to his chest so that he couldn't use it. And keeping the Tiara active was taking all of Serena's concentration, so she couldn't seize her advantage.

"Amy, tell me that you've figured out how to bring this damn thing down!" I cried.

"No such luck! The configuration of the field keeps changing too fast for me to pin point a weak spot!"

Okay, Raye, time to think. Two ways of bringing down a force field. One, hit it in a weak spot that will cause the whole thing to collapse. Two, put enough power into it that it'll short out.

No weak spot? Okay; go for number two.

"MARS ..."

The fire was building inside me ...

"ETERNAL ..."

A fire so hot that it could burn me from the inside out ...

"FLAME ..."

And it erupted.

In the part of my mind that wasn't enraptured by the flame, I was aware that I'd only have ten seconds of fire, and that if I didn't turn it off after those ten seconds ... I'd be the one who got burnt. Literally. But I was the only one with enough power left to perform my ultimate attack.

Four seconds. The field was holding. My gloves were starting to smolder on my hands.

Six seconds. I could hear, distantly, somebody telling me not to throw my life away like this. You'd think Lita (I think it was Lita) would have remembered that I'd been willing to give my life for the cause so many times already.

Seven seconds. My hands were starting to hurt. I thought of Chad, then, and smiled to think that we'd be meeting soon ...

Eight seconds.

Perhaps the roar of the flames was loud enough to hear inside the force field. Or perhaps it was just that she felt she had to look at us one last time. Serena turned her head in our direction, and saw what I was doing. She opened her mouth, but I couldn't hear anything.

That's when Ourannos forced the tiara away, and flung his spear at her. It slammed into her right side, spinning her around once, before she collapsed to the ground.

Nine seconds. The field went down.

So, however, did I. I felt like every ounce of strength had been put into that burn ... it took me several seconds to realize what had just happened.

Serena.

The others leapt over my head, killing in their eyes as they went to confront Ourannos ... Lita, Amy, Mina, Erica, Michelle ... and I knew that they weren't going to be enough to stop him.

Where was Darien? And then I remembered ... he was encased in a crystal shell that Ourannos had trapped him in earlier ... In the last moments of her life, he wouldn't be here for her.

So I'd have to be.

Inch by agonizing inch, I crawled to where she was slumped with the spear still sticking out of her, and over the sounds of the battle royal (was that suddenly stopped noise Erica's last cry of defiance? I never knew) I could hear Luna pleading with Serena, telling her it would be okay, that they'd get a doctor ...

Where had I heard that before?

And then, quite suddenly, she was Serena. Not Sailor Moon, not the Moon Princess. Just a very small young woman named Serena Usagi Tsukino, whose greatest wish had always been to be someone who was both normal and loved ...

And then her eyes hazed over, and I knew that my friend was dead.

And Luna, who had never had to see her die before, screamed.

Elsewhere, I could hear the others, beaten. We'd lost. In the final battle for the fate of the Earth, we'd lost.

"So pathetic," Ouranos muttered as he surveyed the field. "Not one of you was up to the task..."

And that's when I heard the noise. I lifted my head to stare.

Something was happening to Serena's corpse.

It was swelling up, expanding as if it were filled with gas ... and then it exploded, in a burst of pure, white light and a sound I'd only heard once before ... the music of the spheres ...

And she was standing there, tall, pale, and stern-faced. The only traces of Serena that I could see there were in the actual features, but they looked as though they had been schooled to be as rigid as possible.

Serenity, the music whispered.

She rose up to confront Ouranos, buoyed by winds that I couldn't see or feel ... and she defeated him, though I was never sure how ...

And she came back to Earth, wept quietly over Erica and Michelle's bodies ... and then she turned to us ...

"S-s-serena?" Amy asked.

"No, Amy ... Serena is dead. I know everything she ever knew, and feel everything that she felt. But the person you knew as Serena is gone ... there is only Serenity, now."

Her face was so beautiful that it was almost inhuman.

And then, not for the first time, not for the last, I wept for the girl who had died so that a goddess could be born.

* * *

But she is still Serena, and I still love her with all my heart. And I am terrified of her death; more frightened than I have been facing any monster, even the ones that killed me the first time; more frightened than I was the first time I made love ...

She can see my thoughts, I know. The faint mist I can see in her eyes is all the proof I need of it.

"I don't want you to die," I whisper, pleading now, vaguely aware of the tears rolling down my face. "I can't imagine a world without you in it. I don't want to live there, Serena ... I want to die when you die ..."

"No," she whispers, and lifts a single hand to my face, catching the tears, "you have to go on. Please. Even if it is for one moment longer ... live longer than me. Because I cannot imagine a world without you, Raye."

"Why? I'm nothing. I'm nobody. You're a miracle."

"We are ALL miracles, Raye. Each and every last one of us. Everyone who lives, or ever has, or ever will. That is the lesson that she meant for me to learn, I think."

"She?"

"My mother."

She waited for me. She could choose to die anytime. I can't stop her. She has been waiting for me by her own choice ... because she wants me to know that it is her choice.

"I give you my permission, Serena," I whisper, still holding to her hand.

I can feel her slowly speeding up the process of her death. There's so much I want to say; so many things I've never told her. And I know that I will never be able to say them, and that it's not important, because she knows me ...

"Raye," she murmurs, drowsily, "there is something I have been meaning to ask you for a while now ... I never got around to it."

I know what the question will be. Between us, there can be only one question. One thing which she could never have known, because I hid the truth so deep within me that there were moments when I wasn't sure of it myself.

"A long time ago ... you were going out with Endymion ... but he never told me ... were you ... intimate?"

So much more delicately put than Lita asked me, so long ago. If it were anyone else, anytime else, I know the answer I'd give: None of your business.

But this is Serena, and I could never lie to her. It is her business ... so I lean closely to her ear, and I whisper my Secret.

The Earth seems to shudder as I do so.

And she looks at me with eyes filled with love. "Oh, my friend ..." she whispers, and her soft lips touch mine, just once.

And she dies.

One moment more, she'd pleaded.

All right. I can do that.

One moment ... and maybe a bit more.


End file.
